The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is extending the consultation period on modifications to its cost recovery program. Within its many mandates, the CFIA inspects imports and exports of food, animals and plants and collects various fees to do so.

The time limit for consultations on this matter with Canadian businesses and consumers has been extended to April 21, 2017.

The Agency reports that hundreds of sector-specific CFIA fees are now in place, which creates complexity and leads to inconsistencies in how fees are calculated. In addition, most of the CFIA's fees have not changed since the organization was created almost twenty years ago, but the cost of delivering services has increased with inflation and other factors.

The stated objectives of the review are "to support regulated parities in the food, plant, and animal sector with greater consistency in fees, increased efficiencies and improve predictability in service delivery, while aligning fees to better reflect the current costs of delivering services."